


Jamie MacDonald's Gigantic Robotic Nurse

by MindBoggling



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:27:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29160393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MindBoggling/pseuds/MindBoggling
Summary: It's crack. Don't yell at me.WIP much.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Now Jamie wasn't a scientist. No sir, no idea how that artifucktual intelligence was going to work. Actual human intelligence was so rare it was hard to believe that even in a number of indefinite universes they'd come up with something noteworthy.

But ever since that IT overspend that would have paid for 50,000 nurses - or a gigantic robotic one - he's been thinking. 

You see, nurses are hot. Jamie likes nurses, and a lot of nurses seem to like him too. He's had a lot of pleasant encounters with nurses. They are good people, nurses. They care.

But he wouldnae want to be in their care constantly, right? 

Jamie's na stupid. He knows huge blue eyes and massive enthusiasm will only get him so far for maybe ten more years, maybe fifteen if he's lucky.  
And if he's unlucky he will live longer and need care and the only nurses willing to care for him will be at some understaffed NHS retirement home.

So he's been thinking. A Lot. And saving.

And now the time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things.

Which of course meant one thing: to purchase A Personal Robotic Nurse For Jamie MacDonald.


	2. Chapter 2

For some stupid reason things almost never ran as smoothly as Jamie anticipated.

Jamie had not expected to get his Robotic Nurse from the NHS or have them delivered by vixen.com, he was not naive.

He had been prepared to do a lot of research on standards and warranty conditions and test results and the best value for his money.

He was confessing to himself being a wee bit disappointed when researching suppliers. THERE WERE NO FUCKIN' ROBOTIC NURSES TO BUY FOR THE LIFE OF HIM (* _Bless me father for I have sinned_ *)

  
Robotic Nurses were Such A Fuckin Big Thing in the media and you could not buy a single one?

This was fucking market failure. This would have to change. This would better be fixed asafp.

Fuck the middle man. He'd go straight to the Snotty AI Trade Fair and Conference and talk to the sales reps there.

Course there was no way he‘d buck up a fucking 299 quid for a fucking conference ticket. Their PR people were very understanding when Jamie explained this to them politely and with a certain emphasis. So a free press pass it was.

* * *

It wasn't easy to find someone at that fuckin' show talking like a normal person. There were only two types of people: either posh Oxbridge engineer twats or posh Oxbridge sales cunts, both very obviously suffering from language diarrhea.

After an hour of getting irritated Jamie went for a fag and ended up chatting to a nice lady from Inverness in smoker's corner. He had mistaken her for a wee nurse first. Apparantly she worked in programming Sexy Robotic Nurses (she kept calling them Personal Care Robots probably for marketing reasons but he didn't mind).

She told him the main challenge in creating Robotic Nurses was programming a machine with a reliable set of ethics .

Ethics. It turned out they made a huge fuss about ETHICS?

Fuck them. Those nutters were going about it entirely wrong. If Jamie had ever cared about ethical decision making he‘d never been able to work in Westminster. He'd not let that get in his fuckin' way thinking about life after the plague pit.


	3. Chapter 3

"So mind explaining what‘s that thing about ethics is darlin'?"

She looked at him like he was a loony. Jamie didn't mind much, he was used to getting worse looks at work. Since he was on a private mission he'd better tread carefully though.

"I'm not your darlin' ye wee bampot. Who are you even working for?".

"Sorry love, should've introduced myself: Jamie MacDonald, Media Advisor for Scottish Labour". He waved his press accreditation and gave her a wide-eyed innocent smile. "I'm not a science hack so I might need some extra tuition. I'd rather talk to you than those twats inside".

Her suspicious look softened. She either disliked that bunch of people prancing about too or ye olde MacDonald bush baby eyes still worked.

"I'm Eilidh"

"Please tae meet ye Eilidh. You need tae be anywhere or do you mind telling me more over a cup of coffee?"

* * *

They shared a booth in a local pub where Eilidh tried her best to outline the challenges in her field of work.

"Before robots can make decisions for humans, they will need to be able to tackle ambiguous circumstances. Human moral standards can be inconsistent, incomplete, or inappropriate in view of other sets of standards. So for personal care robots it would be desirable to be able to some extent reason about them, depending on the situation. I'm sure ye agree Jamie".

"Och, ye don‘t want a fucking computer bird to be fuckin‘ reasoning with you Eilidh. Where would the advantage of a robotic be over a fuckin real nurse then?"

Eilidh patiently explained how Japan was the current leader in robot nurse production and how the engineering twats there had gotten all distracted by some minor issues, like having the highest life expectancy in the world and not enough people to take care of the old gits. Also the economy suffered by having to pay for the pensions.

Jamie wondered how a country that had invented vending machines for worn panties could get it all wrong?

"Yeah, of course you can stick tae trying to build robotic nurses tae help administer care and support in hospitals, care facilities, and homes. But that's all about the higher life _quantity_ of people. Sure it should be about _quality_ of life too. You shouldn't address care for the elderly simply by taking vital signs or delivering medicine or discussing with them if they can watch fuckin' Eastenders that night"

"You're not entirely wrong. Of course it's still early days. But we are focusing on elderly people who are not accustomed to automation in their private lives. So aye, maybe we're restricting us on certain areas of using robots while there are many different aspects of daily life automated already where people love automation if it means they can focus on their careers and personal interests“.

"Efuckingxactly! So why fiddle with needless ethic issues love. Don‘t sell'em to hospitals. Sell‘em to those who seek to enhance everyday quality of life, right?“

Eilidh obviously couldn't follow Jamie's quicksilver mind there. Luckily Jamie was used to people who needed him to spell things out for them.

"Eilidh, just sayin' you could work on trying to provide for that elderly demographic for another decade before helping anya single person. But you could also make billions by creating _special robotic nurses_ for a large group of people that would be fine with having them respecting a simple yes/no decision. No complex ethics necessary. You could start working on that right now! A robotic nurse being able to perform a limited set of tasks based on yes/no questions would be absofuckinglutely sufficient."

It would hopefully be _even satisfactory_ , but he wasn't going to mention that yet.


End file.
